UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 6097: invalid continuation byte

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1

hi there,

ubuntu server 18.04
i tried this command :
sudo certbot --expand -d abc.toto.com

i get this error :
Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
An unexpected error occurred:
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 6097: invalid continuation byte
Please see the logfiles in /var/log/letsencrypt for more details.

here is the log file :
2022-06-28 18:17:09,199:ERROR:certbot.log:An unexpected error occurred:
2022-06-28 18:18:22,825:DEBUG:certbot.main:certbot version: 0.31.0
2022-06-28 18:18:22,826:DEBUG:certbot.main:Arguments: ['--expand', '-d', 'abc.toto.com']
2022-06-28 18:18:22,826:DEBUG:certbot.main:Discovered plugins: PluginsRegistry(PluginEntryPoint#manual,PluginEntryPoint#nginx,PluginEntryPoint#null,PluginEntryPoint#standalone,PluginEntryPoint#webroot)
2022-06-28 18:18:22,834:DEBUG:certbot.log:Root logging level set at 20
2022-06-28 18:18:22,835:INFO:certbot.log:Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log
2022-06-28 18:18:22,836:DEBUG:certbot.plugins.selection:Requested authenticator None and installer None
2022-06-28 18:18:22,856:DEBUG:certbot.log:Exiting abnormally:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/certbot", line 11, in
load_entry_point('certbot==0.31.0', 'console_scripts', 'certbot')()
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/main.py", line 1365, in main
return config.func(config, plugins)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/main.py", line 1101, in run
installer, authenticator = plug_sel.choose_configurator_plugins(config, plugins, "run")
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/plugins/selection.py", line 225, in choose_configurator_plugins
authenticator = installer = pick_configurator(config, req_inst, plugins)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/plugins/selection.py", line 25, in pick_configurator
(interfaces.IAuthenticator, interfaces.IInstaller))
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/plugins/selection.py", line 106, in pick_plugin
verified.prepare()
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/plugins/disco.py", line 251, in prepare
return [plugin_ep.prepare() for plugin_ep in six.itervalues(self._plugins)]
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/plugins/disco.py", line 251, in
return [plugin_ep.prepare() for plugin_ep in six.itervalues(self._plugins)]
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot/plugins/disco.py", line 132, in prepare
self._initialized.prepare()
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/configurator.py", line 152, in prepare
self.parser = parser.NginxParser(self.conf('server-root'))
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/parser.py", line 38, in init
self.load()
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/parser.py", line 45, in load
self._parse_recursively(self.config_root)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/parser.py", line 56, in _parse_recursively
trees = self._parse_files(filepath)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/parser.py", line 207, in _parse_files
parsed = nginxparser.load(_file)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/certbot_nginx/nginxparser.py", line 123, in load
return loads(_file.read())
File "/usr/lib/python3.6/codecs.py", line 321, in decode
(result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 6097: invalid continuation byte
2022-06-28 18:18:22,858:ERROR:certbot.log:An unexpected error occurred:

i have read many things, but no way to really solve this problem and use certbot..
if one of you have the solution.. it would be very nice to share it..
++

2

It seems you have an invalid UTF-8 character in your nginx configuration. Let's try to find it by searching for it.. The following command should probably do the trick. Or at least a trick:

find /etc/nginx/ -type f -printf 'Processing %p\n' -exec sh -c "xxd -g 1 {} | grep -B 2 -A 2 e0" \;
2 Likes
3

thanks for your answer, i used the command you gave me, it results with 14838 lines of unreadable text like this :

00000c0: 34 30 34 3b 0a 0a 23 20 42 79 70 61 73 73 20 74 404;..# Bypass t
000000d0: 68 65 20 66 61 63 74 20 74 68 61 74 20 74 72 79 he fact that try
000000e0: 5f 66 69 6c 65 73 20 72 65 73 65 74 73 20 24 66 _files resets $f
000000f0: 61 73 74 63 67 69 5f 70 61 74 68 5f 69 6e 66 6f astcgi_path_info
00000100: 0a 23 20 73 65 65 3a 20 68 74 74 70 3a 2f 2f 74 .# see: http://t
Processing /etc/nginx/snippets/snakeoil.conf

what can i do with that..?

4

so i found the solution when looking at my nginx.conf, and there was an "à" letter in a line, so i corrected it, and now i can expand my subdomain name..

thanks.

1 Like
5

We need to finetune it a little bit more, I didn't realise it would also trigger on the offset in the front of the lines of output.

find /etc/nginx/ -type f -printf 'Processing %p\n' -exec sh -c "xxd -g 1 {} | grep -B 2 -A 2 -P '(?<=.{10})e0'" \;

Ah OK, you've found the culprit already :slight_smile:

You might want to upgrade your Certbot to a non-ancient version. This kind of issues might be fixed in the mean time.

Also note that when using --expand you should put ALL the required hostnames on the command line, NOT just the one you want to have added.. Certbot works weird in that way...

4 Likes
6

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